Choose from the available Theme Packs:
LGBTQ+ ($25), Asian American Panorama ($88), Asia Pop! ($64), Filipino American History Month ($25), Cinephile ($99), THIS IS 2020 ($35), Martial Arts ($20), Chinese Communities ($88), Japanese Culture ($25), Korean Immersion ($20), Jia Zhang-ke Artist Trilogy ($20), Surrogate Valentine Trilogy ($20), Taiwan Showcase ($50)
LGBTQ+ ($25)
From a crime-fighting beauty queen to an elderly spitting reclusive neighbor, these queer stories explore identity and the memories people leave behind.
Includes: Days, Drama Queen, Love and Death in Montmartre, Nobody, Shorts: Queer Shapes
BUY LGBTQ+ Pack
DAYS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
One man encounters another in Thailand. Tsai Ming-liang’s wordless meditation to the fleeting beauty of everyday details and the exquisite practice of looking and touching.
Buy tickets
DRAMA QUEEN
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
When a transgender woman witnesses a murder, she finds safety in...a beauty pageant! That is, until the villains send an assassin to meet her in the competition.
Buy tickets
LOVE AND DEATH IN MONTMARTRE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
This fantasy romance/real-life documentary reveals the story, secrets, and longings of Qiu Miaojin, a lesbian Taiwanese writer who journeys to Paris in search of a love story and ends up writing her own.
Buy tickets
NOBODY
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
A strange, elderly tailor with secrets befriends a young girl intent on exposing her unfaithful father in this sensitive portrait of public and private life.
Buy tickets
SHORTS: QUEER SHAPES
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Three shorts that queer the shape of filmmaking into audacious new forms.
Buy tickets
Asian American Panorama ($88)
The best of Asian American cinema in all of its colors—from stories of activism and history-making, to tales of woe and humor.
Includes: The Celine Archive, Curtain Up!, Death of Nintendo, Definition Please, The Donut King, Down a Dark Stairwell, Export My Love, Finding Yingying, Gyopo, Mu and The Vanishing World, The Paper Tigers, Surrogate Valentine trilogy, All Shorts Programs
BUY ASIAN AMERICAN PACK
THE CELINE ARCHIVE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
The ghost of one Celine haunts another as filmmaker Celine Parreñas Shimizu uncovers a 1932 Filipino-American community pushing, pulling, and ultimately burying one woman alive.
Buy tickets
CURTAIN UP!
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Students at a NYC Chinatown elementary school work, play, and sing through a theatrical production of Frozen, while reflecting on identity, race, and family expectations.
Buy tickets
DAYLIGHT SAVINGS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
When a heartbroken Goh Nakamura love-clicks with fellow musician Yea-Ming Chen, he decides to test fate and find her in Las Vegas.
Buy tickets
DEATH OF NINTENDO
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
This delightful and nostalgic coming-of-age film chronicles the crusades of a group of friends as they navigate growing up in 1990s Manila.
Buy tickets
DEFINITION PLEASE
Available to watch
Oct 24 12:00 am - Oct 24 11:59 pm
Other former Spelling Bee champs go on to glory. Monica Choudry hasn't left her mom's house. With her pesky brother, Monica learns to care for family–and herself.
Buy tickets
THE DONUT KING
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Meet Ted Ngoy, the tenacious refugee behind the pink box who is single-handedly responsible for the fact that nearly 80% of donut shops in the Los Angeles area are owned by Cambodian Americans.
Buy tickets
DOWN A DARK STAIRWELL
Available to watch
Oct 25 12:00 am - Oct 25 11:59 pm
CENTERPIECE FILM - After the murder of the unarmed Akai Gurley by Peter Liang, a Chinese American cop, factions turn out in the streets, some in support of Black lives, others claiming that an Asian rookie is a convenient scapegoat for a racist justice system.
Buy tickets
EXPORT MY LOVE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
This cross-continental documentary follows Chinese-American Jany Murphy, part matchmaker, part modern day Cyrano de Bergerac, as she tries to help three Chinese divorcees find American husbands.
Buy tickets
FINDING YINGYING
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
In June 2017, Yingying Zhang, a Chinese visiting scholar, mysteriously vanished from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. Soon after, her boyfriend and parents arrive in the US for reasons they never expected: to seek answers from a bewildered campus and a foreign criminal justice system.
Buy tickets
GYOPO
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
With a French New Wave aesthetic and a killer Korean psychedelic rock soundtrack, a motley mix of Korean expats strut and skitter about in the thrum of Seoul’s famously bustling streetscapes.
Buy tickets
I WILL MAKE YOU MINE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Three women rethink their lives when their mutual ex saunters back into town in this musical continuation of the Surrogate Valentine trilogy.
Buy tickets
MU AND THE VANISHING WORLD
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Mu, a Kayan woman from Myanmar, leaves her life as a tourist attraction in Thailand and resettles in Bowling Green, Kentucky, where resettlement and single motherhood test her determination to forge her own path.
Buy tickets
THE PAPER TIGERS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
In this action-comedy, coming-of-(middle)-age kung fu flick, three martial arts students reunite after decades apart to find what–or who–killed their sifu.
Buy tickets
SURROGATE VALENTINE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Goh scrapes by as an indie musician while chatterbox actor Danny shadows him from gig to gig, until an old high school crush suddenly appears and throws everything off.
Buy tickets
SHORTS: BE/LONGING
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Shorts that probe the soft spots of belonging-to and longing-for a place in the world.
Buy tickets
SHORTS: ECHOPLEX
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Inventive films that change the format and spin the artifacts, annals, and echoes of all that’s left behind.
Buy tickets
SHORTS: HORMONAL DREAM
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Shorts that swim in body chemistry.
Buy tickets
SHORTS: HUMAN RESOURCES
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Heroic feats, chilling power plays, and surreal misbehaviors while on the job.
Buy tickets
SHORTS: MALL RAT
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Inhale the smell of teen spirit from Michelle Kwan fandom, bank robberies, and monsters-in-the-making.
Buy tickets
SHORTS: QUEER SHAPES
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Three shorts that queer the shape of filmmaking into audacious new forms.
Buy tickets
SHORTS: REEL VOICES
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Nine filmmakers, nine stories exploring filmmaking from the teen perspective. From our Reel Voices documentary filmmaking program.
Buy tickets
SHORTS: TAIWAN <‐> AMERICA
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Americans in Taiwan, Taiwanese in America, and all the messy, awkward, and sentimental combinations of familial and cinematic border-crossing at the intersection of ABTs and ah-ma's.
Buy tickets
SHORTS: TIGHT QUARTERS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
When social distance becomes social compression, these narratives find a way out.
Buy tickets
SHORTS: WE ARE IN A DIGITAL HELL
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Shorts that can only exist in the recesses of the remix and the weird underbelly of the digital.
Buy tickets
Asia Pop! ($64)
Films to make you laugh, cry, and cheer, featuring accidental assassins, beauty queen hideouts, and giant robot dreams.
Includes: Assassins, Drama Queen, It Feels So Good, Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982, Memories to Choke On Drinks To Wash Them Down, My Prince Edward, Project Dreams – How to Build Mazinger Z’s Hangar, Wild Swords
Buy Asia Pop! Pack
ASSASSINS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Perfect killers or accidental pawns? Real-life spy thriller as two women wipe a toxin on Kim Jong-un's brother's face and disappear into the crowd.
Buy tickets
DRAMA QUEEN
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
When a transgender woman witnesses a murder, she finds safety in...a beauty pageant! That is, until the villains send an assassin to meet her in the competition.
Buy tickets
IT FEELS SO GOOD
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
With a wedding on the horizon, former lovers Ken and Naoko reunite and dip their toes into the libidinous limbo of a more carefree past.
Buy tickets
KIM JI-YOUNG, BORN 1982
Available to watch
Oct 24 12:00 am - Oct 28 11:59 pm
Some say she’s crazy. Maybe she’s possessed. There’s no simple explanation for Kim Ji-Young, a college grad turned stay-at-home mom. Acclaimed adaptation of Cho Nam-Joo’s best-selling novel and an ode to the unspoken yearnings of mothers and daughters.
Buy tickets
MEMORIES TO CHOKE ON, DRINKS TO WASH THEM DOWN
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Four delightful vignettes capture the complex heart of Hong Kong as its people -- young and old, local and migrant -- wrestle with the past and look towards the future.
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MY PRINCE EDWARD
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Her boyfriend's proposed. Now Fong needs to get out of a secret marriage but her fake husband has got the wheels turning.
Buy tickets
PROJECT DREAMS – HOW TO BUILD MAZINGER Z’S HANGAR
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Workplace comedy meets mecha anime, when an overzealous marketing director comes up with a plan to construct the iconic hangar from the anime Mazinger Z, the PR team gets roped into a wild and bureaucratic ride to achieve an otaku pipe dream.
Buy tickets
WILD SWORDS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Tense hunt between a faceless foe and a disappeared swordsman from two bitterly feuding sects, in this ravishing indie wuxia film.
Buy tickets
Filipino American History Month ($25)
Celebrate Filipino American History Month and connect with what’s happening in the motherland by watching some of the latest films and film restorations from the Philippines.
Includes: The Celine Archive, Death of Nintendo, Genus Pan, Misteryo Sa Tuwa, A Thousand Cuts
In Collaboration with SDSU Asian Pacific Islander Desi American ERG, AB Samahan, San Diego Filipino Cinema
Buy Filipino American Pack
THE CELINE ARCHIVE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
The ghost of one Celine haunts another as filmmaker Celine Parreñas Shimizu uncovers a 1932 Filipino-American community pushing, pulling, and ultimately burying one woman alive.
Buy tickets
DEATH OF NINTENDO
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
This delightful and nostalgic coming-of-age film chronicles the crusades of a group of friends as they navigate growing up in 1990s Manila.
Buy tickets
GENUS PAN
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
In Lav Diaz’s scathing allegory for mankind’s innate cruelty, three Filipino miners travel back to their island home and find nothing but menace, corruption, and traumatic memories lingering in the dense forest terrain.
Buy tickets
MISTERYO SA TUWA
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
If a plane crashes in a remote mountain, will anybody notice if villagers loot the wreckage? Or perhaps power will clash with greed, inciting a cycle of deception and a delicious moral thriller.
Buy tickets
A THOUSAND CUTS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Ramona Diaz's blistering look at investigative journalist Maria Ressa’s relentless stand against Duterte.
Buy tickets
Cinephile ($99)
Cinema is an art form. The films included in this package exemplify the best of the best, the most experimental, and the most timeless pieces of art that have ever graced a silver screen. While we can’t enjoy these evocative and powerful pieces in a full theater, have a slice of movie magic at home with this list.
Includes the following sections: Masters (including Jia Zhang-ke trilogy), Invisible Waves, and After Life.
Films: After My Homecoming, All The Things We Never Said, Archiving Time, Black Milk, Chasing Dream, The Chess Game Of The Wind, Days, Dong, Gamak Ghar, Genus Pan, The Husband’s Secret, Letter To An Angel, Lost Lotus, Love And Death In Montmartre, Mauri, Me And The Cult Leader, Mekong 2030, Misteryo Sa Tuwa, Nobody, The Reason Why I’m Home., Stray, Swimming Out Till The Sea Turns Blue, There Is No Evil, A Thousand Cuts, Under The Open Sky, Useless, We Have Boots, The Woman Who Ran
Buy Cinephile Pack
AFTER MY HOMECOMING
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Playing a fictionalized version of herself, actress Kasumi Arimura visits her mother at home on her unexpected day off.
Buy tickets
ALL THE THINGS WE NEVER SAID
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Atsuhisa’s quiet life is shattered when he catches his wife with another man. A series of tragic events force him to break through his silence to fight for his daughter.
Buy tickets
ARCHIVING TIME
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Film restorationists at the Taiwan Film Institute walk us through the process of re-discovering and re-juvenating a national cinema.
Buy tickets
BLACK MILK
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Wessi awakens taboo attractions and unruly impulses when she leaves her life in Germany to reunite with her sister, faraway in Mongolia.
Buy tickets
CHASING DREAM
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
MMA fighter Tiger decides to help aspiring pop star Cuckoo get onto a singing show and destroy her ex-boyfriend, a celebrity judge and song thief. Johnny To is at it again, in this action and ballad-packed film filled with ringside fights, hot pot, celebrity culture, musicals, and much, much, much…
Buy tickets
THE CHESS GAME OF THE WIND
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
The passing of a wealthy matriarch leaves conniving would-be heirs jockeying for power in this long-unavailable tale of mansion intrigue.
Buy tickets
DAYS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
One man encounters another in Thailand. Tsai Ming-liang’s wordless meditation to the fleeting beauty of everyday details and the exquisite practice of looking and touching.
Buy tickets
DONG
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
A companion piece to Jia Zhang-ke’s monumental Still Life, Jia follows famed painter Liu Xiadong as he paints laborers demolishing their hometown for the Three Gorges Dam project.
Buy tickets
GAMAK GHAR
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Immediately after the feature, ticket holders can enjoy a pre-recorded bonus Q&A with director Achal Mishra! New Voices in India Cinema Award,...
Buy tickets
GENUS PAN
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
In Lav Diaz’s scathing allegory for mankind’s innate cruelty, three Filipino miners travel back to their island home and find nothing but menace, corruption, and traumatic memories lingering in the dense forest terrain.
Buy tickets
THE HUSBAND’S SECRET
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
A husband can't tell his wife that her old classmate is his ex-lover, in this fiery Taiwanese-language melodrama.
Buy tickets
LETTER TO AN ANGEL
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Roped into a fashion shoot in search of the “exotic,” a young Indonesian boy receives a Polaroid camera and sparks trouble on the island of Sumba.
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LOST LOTUS
Available to watch
Oct 28 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Wu Yu's life is overturned after her elderly mother is killed in a hit-and-run. Previously a young, secular school-teacher, she now dives into her mother's Buddhism, and sets off on a solitary mission to bring the killer to justice.
Buy tickets
LOVE AND DEATH IN MONTMARTRE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
This fantasy romance/real-life documentary reveals the story, secrets, and longings of Qiu Miaojin, a lesbian Taiwanese writer who journeys to Paris in search of a love story and ends up writing her own.
Buy tickets
MAURI
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
A man with an unsettled past and a matriarch with a sixth sense for change face the irreversable in a once-thriving Maori community.
Buy tickets
ME AND THE CULT LEADER
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Twenty-five years later, a victim of the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack takes a long journey of reckoning with the head of the doomsday cult responsible for his lifelong injuries.
Buy tickets
MEKONG 2030
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Five filmmakers speculate existence along the Mekong River Delta ten years into the future, as man-made development projects and climate change threaten the river’s ecological function.
Buy tickets
MISTERYO SA TUWA
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
If a plane crashes in a remote mountain, will anybody notice if villagers loot the wreckage? Or perhaps power will clash with greed, inciting a cycle of deception and a delicious moral thriller.
Buy tickets
NOBODY
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
A strange, elderly tailor with secrets befriends a young girl intent on exposing her unfaithful father in this sensitive portrait of public and private life.
Buy tickets
THE REASON WHY I’M HOME.
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Chen-yun returns home for the first time in five years to deal with the fallout of her estranged mother’s deep involvement in a cult after it leads to her younger brother’s violent death.
Buy tickets
STRAY
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Filmed over two years, STRAY follows the resourceful and brave stray dogs of Istanbul. Charismatic mutt Zeytin mixes gentleness with street smarts while navigating a network of humans and animals, itself a rich, ever-changing map of Istanbul’s overlooked and invisible.
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SWIMMING OUT TILL THE SEA TURNS BLUE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Focusing on four authors spanning modern China, Jia Zhang-ke sketches literary culture onto a turbulent history, the rural landscape, and the faces of ordinary people.
Buy tickets
THERE IS NO EVIL
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
* Limited tickets available. Golden Bear, 2020 Berlin International Film Festival Over the course of his two-decade career, independent...
Buy tickets
A THOUSAND CUTS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Ramona Diaz's blistering look at investigative journalist Maria Ressa’s relentless stand against Duterte.
Buy tickets
UNDER THE OPEN SKY
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
After being released from prison for a thirteen-year murder sentence, a former yakuza member is set on making an honest living and becoming a reformed citizen.
Buy tickets
USELESS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Jia Zhang-ke’s ode to fashion–a textile factory, a designer, and a tailor–in a China where nothing is ever as it seems.
Buy tickets
WE HAVE BOOTS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Immediately after the feature, ticket holders can enjoy a pre-recorded bonus Q&A with director Evans Chan and film subject Alex Chow!...
Buy tickets
THE WOMAN WHO RAN
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Instead of focusing on his favorite subjects–drunken, listless Korean men–master filmmaker Hong Sang-soo flips the script and follows an ensemble of strong female characters as they search for peace in a world where patriarchal interruptions are ever-present.
Buy tickets
THIS IS 2020 ($35)
Required viewing for the end of the world, these films are artifacts of our time and prerequisites for the upcoming 2020 Election.
Includes: 76 Days, Down a Dark Stairwell, A Thousand Cuts, We Have Boots
BUY This is 2020 Pack
76 DAYS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
OPENING FILM - This miraculous documentary, set in Wuhan hospitals during the 76 days the city was on lockdown, is a powerful, unimaginable, harrowing, but deeply hopeful portrait of front-of-line workers improvising heroic emotional care.
Buy tickets
DOWN A DARK STAIRWELL
Available to watch
Oct 25 12:00 am - Oct 25 11:59 pm
CENTERPIECE FILM - After the murder of the unarmed Akai Gurley by Peter Liang, a Chinese American cop, factions turn out in the streets, some in support of Black lives, others claiming that an Asian rookie is a convenient scapegoat for a racist justice system.
Buy tickets
A THOUSAND CUTS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Ramona Diaz's blistering look at investigative journalist Maria Ressa’s relentless stand against Duterte.
Buy tickets
WE HAVE BOOTS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Immediately after the feature, ticket holders can enjoy a pre-recorded bonus Q&A with director Evans Chan and film subject Alex Chow!...
Buy tickets
Martial Arts ($20)
A whole range of martial arts films to satisfy all film lovers, from a Hong Kong master, indie wuxia, and Asian American kung-fu comedy.
Includes: Chasing Dream, The Paper Tigers, Wild Swords
Buy Martial Arts Pack
CHASING DREAM
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
MMA fighter Tiger decides to help aspiring pop star Cuckoo get onto a singing show and destroy her ex-boyfriend, a celebrity judge and song thief. Johnny To is at it again, in this action and ballad-packed film filled with ringside fights, hot pot, celebrity culture, musicals, and much, much, much…
Buy tickets
THE PAPER TIGERS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
In this action-comedy, coming-of-(middle)-age kung fu flick, three martial arts students reunite after decades apart to find what–or who–killed their sifu.
Buy tickets
WILD SWORDS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Tense hunt between a faceless foe and a disappeared swordsman from two bitterly feuding sects, in this ravishing indie wuxia film.
Buy tickets
Chinese Communities ($88)
Explore this curated passage of time with Chinese cinema featuring tales of COVID-19 from its epicenter in Wuhan to a masterful trilogy by Jia Zhang-ke to an endearing story of Chinese American kids who just wanna have fun.
Includes: 76 Days, Chasing Dream, Curtain Up!, Down a Dark Stairwell, Export My Love, Finding Yingying, Jia Zhang-ke trilogy, Lost Lotus, Wild Swords
BUY Chinese Communities Pack
76 DAYS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
OPENING FILM - This miraculous documentary, set in Wuhan hospitals during the 76 days the city was on lockdown, is a powerful, unimaginable, harrowing, but deeply hopeful portrait of front-of-line workers improvising heroic emotional care.
Buy tickets
CHASING DREAM
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
MMA fighter Tiger decides to help aspiring pop star Cuckoo get onto a singing show and destroy her ex-boyfriend, a celebrity judge and song thief. Johnny To is at it again, in this action and ballad-packed film filled with ringside fights, hot pot, celebrity culture, musicals, and much, much, much…
Buy tickets
CURTAIN UP!
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Students at a NYC Chinatown elementary school work, play, and sing through a theatrical production of Frozen, while reflecting on identity, race, and family expectations.
Buy tickets
DONG
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
A companion piece to Jia Zhang-ke’s monumental Still Life, Jia follows famed painter Liu Xiadong as he paints laborers demolishing their hometown for the Three Gorges Dam project.
Buy tickets
DOWN A DARK STAIRWELL
Available to watch
Oct 25 12:00 am - Oct 25 11:59 pm
CENTERPIECE FILM - After the murder of the unarmed Akai Gurley by Peter Liang, a Chinese American cop, factions turn out in the streets, some in support of Black lives, others claiming that an Asian rookie is a convenient scapegoat for a racist justice system.
Buy tickets
EXPORT MY LOVE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
This cross-continental documentary follows Chinese-American Jany Murphy, part matchmaker, part modern day Cyrano de Bergerac, as she tries to help three Chinese divorcees find American husbands.
Buy tickets
FINDING YINGYING
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
In June 2017, Yingying Zhang, a Chinese visiting scholar, mysteriously vanished from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. Soon after, her boyfriend and parents arrive in the US for reasons they never expected: to seek answers from a bewildered campus and a foreign criminal justice system.
Buy tickets
LOST LOTUS
Available to watch
Oct 28 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Wu Yu's life is overturned after her elderly mother is killed in a hit-and-run. Previously a young, secular school-teacher, she now dives into her mother's Buddhism, and sets off on a solitary mission to bring the killer to justice.
Buy tickets
SWIMMING OUT TILL THE SEA TURNS BLUE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Focusing on four authors spanning modern China, Jia Zhang-ke sketches literary culture onto a turbulent history, the rural landscape, and the faces of ordinary people.
Buy tickets
USELESS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Jia Zhang-ke’s ode to fashion–a textile factory, a designer, and a tailor–in a China where nothing is ever as it seems.
Buy tickets
WILD SWORDS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Tense hunt between a faceless foe and a disappeared swordsman from two bitterly feuding sects, in this ravishing indie wuxia film.
Buy tickets
Japanese Culture ($25)
Get a primer of Japanese culture in all of its vibrant colors with a journey that takes you from a failing relationship to an enigmatic intimate encounter with a cult leader to an action-packed morphing robot anime adaptation.
Includes: All the Things We Never Said, It Feels So Good, Me and the Cult Leader, Project Dreams – How to Build Mazinger Z’s Hangar, Under the Open Sky
BUY Japanese Culture Pack
ALL THE THINGS WE NEVER SAID
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Atsuhisa’s quiet life is shattered when he catches his wife with another man. A series of tragic events force him to break through his silence to fight for his daughter.
Buy tickets
IT FEELS SO GOOD
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
With a wedding on the horizon, former lovers Ken and Naoko reunite and dip their toes into the libidinous limbo of a more carefree past.
Buy tickets
ME AND THE CULT LEADER
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Twenty-five years later, a victim of the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack takes a long journey of reckoning with the head of the doomsday cult responsible for his lifelong injuries.
Buy tickets
PROJECT DREAMS – HOW TO BUILD MAZINGER Z’S HANGAR
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Workplace comedy meets mecha anime, when an overzealous marketing director comes up with a plan to construct the iconic hangar from the anime Mazinger Z, the PR team gets roped into a wild and bureaucratic ride to achieve an otaku pipe dream.
Buy tickets
UNDER THE OPEN SKY
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
After being released from prison for a thirteen-year murder sentence, a former yakuza member is set on making an honest living and becoming a reformed citizen.
Buy tickets
Korean Immersion ($20)
Dive into storytelling that breaks boundaries and exposes the realities of Korean life, identity, and family from women-led tales to a musical odyssey.
Includes: Gyopo, Kim Ji-young, Born 1982, The Woman Who Ran
BUY Korean Immersion Pack
GYOPO
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
With a French New Wave aesthetic and a killer Korean psychedelic rock soundtrack, a motley mix of Korean expats strut and skitter about in the thrum of Seoul’s famously bustling streetscapes.
Buy tickets
KIM JI-YOUNG, BORN 1982
Available to watch
Oct 24 12:00 am - Oct 28 11:59 pm
Some say she’s crazy. Maybe she’s possessed. There’s no simple explanation for Kim Ji-Young, a college grad turned stay-at-home mom. Acclaimed adaptation of Cho Nam-Joo’s best-selling novel and an ode to the unspoken yearnings of mothers and daughters.
Buy tickets
THE WOMAN WHO RAN
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Instead of focusing on his favorite subjects–drunken, listless Korean men–master filmmaker Hong Sang-soo flips the script and follows an ensemble of strong female characters as they search for peace in a world where patriarchal interruptions are ever-present.
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Jia Zhang-ke Artist Trilogy ($20)
With the new SWIMMING OUT TILL THE SEA TURNS BLUE, director Jia Zhang-ke completes a trilogy of documentaries about artists in China. The films encompass fashion, painting, and literature, but also the tectonic turns of a modern China and the would-be freedoms of artists and their essential ties to Chinese society.
Includes: Dong, Swimming Out Till The Sea Turns Blue, Useless
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DONG
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
A companion piece to Jia Zhang-ke’s monumental Still Life, Jia follows famed painter Liu Xiadong as he paints laborers demolishing their hometown for the Three Gorges Dam project.
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USELESS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Jia Zhang-ke’s ode to fashion–a textile factory, a designer, and a tailor–in a China where nothing is ever as it seems.
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SWIMMING OUT TILL THE SEA TURNS BLUE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Focusing on four authors spanning modern China, Jia Zhang-ke sketches literary culture onto a turbulent history, the rural landscape, and the faces of ordinary people.
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Surrogate Valentine Trilogy ($20)
Director Lynn Chen rounds out the nine-year cinematic journey of singer-songwriter Goh Nakamura and his friends, lovers, and everyone in between. Playing that line between fact and fiction like an old guitar, these three instant-classic comedies show Asian Americans at their bumbling bests: creating, romancing, glowing under the California sun.
Includes: Daylight Savings, I Will Make You Mine, Surrogate Valentine
Sponsored by San Diego Chinese Women’s Association
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SURROGATE VALENTINE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Goh scrapes by as an indie musician while chatterbox actor Danny shadows him from gig to gig, until an old high school crush suddenly appears and throws everything off.
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DAYLIGHT SAVINGS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
When a heartbroken Goh Nakamura love-clicks with fellow musician Yea-Ming Chen, he decides to test fate and find her in Las Vegas.
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I WILL MAKE YOU MINE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Three women rethink their lives when their mutual ex saunters back into town in this musical continuation of the Surrogate Valentine trilogy.
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Taiwan Showcase ($50)
For the 9th year in a row, the San Diego Asian Film Festival presents the Taiwan Film Showcase, the largest annual presentation of Taiwanese cinema outside of Asia. Every year, the Showcase highlights the diversity of perspectives, languages, stories, and genres by filmmakers in Taiwan today.
Includes: Archiving Time, Days, The Husband’s Secret, Love and Death in Montmartre, Nobody, The Reason Why I’m Home, Shorts: Taiwan America
Sponsored by: Ministry of Culture Republic of China (Taiwan), Taiwan Academy, UC San Diego Taiwan Studies Lecture Series, UC San Diego The Chuan Lyu Endowed Chair of Taiwan Studies
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ARCHIVING TIME
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Film restorationists at the Taiwan Film Institute walk us through the process of re-discovering and re-juvenating a national cinema.
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DAYS
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
One man encounters another in Thailand. Tsai Ming-liang’s wordless meditation to the fleeting beauty of everyday details and the exquisite practice of looking and touching.
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THE HUSBAND’S SECRET
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
A husband can't tell his wife that her old classmate is his ex-lover, in this fiery Taiwanese-language melodrama.
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LOVE AND DEATH IN MONTMARTRE
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
This fantasy romance/real-life documentary reveals the story, secrets, and longings of Qiu Miaojin, a lesbian Taiwanese writer who journeys to Paris in search of a love story and ends up writing her own.
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NOBODY
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
A strange, elderly tailor with secrets befriends a young girl intent on exposing her unfaithful father in this sensitive portrait of public and private life.
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THE REASON WHY I’M HOME.
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Chen-yun returns home for the first time in five years to deal with the fallout of her estranged mother’s deep involvement in a cult after it leads to her younger brother’s violent death.
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SHORTS: TAIWAN <‐> AMERICA
Available to watch
Oct 23 12:00 am - Oct 31 11:59 pm
Americans in Taiwan, Taiwanese in America, and all the messy, awkward, and sentimental combinations of familial and cinematic border-crossing at the intersection of ABTs and ah-ma's.
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